“Have you ever thought of building a conference center?”
Pastor James burst into laughter at Howard Joslin’s question. They sat, along with ABH President Fran Geiger Joslin, over lunch after a whirlwind week of teaching pastors and their wives at the Hope for Marriage Conference. Howard never guessed that ABH’s Director of Operations in Africa already owned five acres of land slated for a conference center.
Howard and Fran barely stepped off the plane home when funding arrived to draw up conference center plans and dig a well. These hopeful beginnings inaugurated a season of earnest prayer for God to provide the rest of the needed funding. Along with a large conference room, the plans include accommodations for pastors and ABH teachers, facilities to print books, a library, and an apartment where Howard and Fran can stay during extended ministry trips. After the initial construction costs, the facility will fund itself through an event center, hotel, and restaurant open to the public. ABH hopes to purchase an additional twenty-five acres of land to begin the construction process.
ABH conferences provide the only formal training some rural pastors ever receive. Couples learn to study the Bible for themselves by observing the text closely, asking questions, and challenging their own beliefs and behaviors. They watch Howard and Fran’s example of a couple working together in ministry. Often the conference serves as a first honeymoon for couples who would go hungry for a month if they ever took a night away from home and ministry pressures.
A World of Difference
When Americans hear the word “pastor,” they envision someone with a seminary degree, a library full of theology books, a modern church building, and a regular salary. The word “pastor” in Tanzania evokes a starkly different picture.
A Tanzanian boy sits near the back of his elementary classroom of over one hundred students. Learning to read becomes an exercise in dodging his classmates’ heads to see the letters his teacher holds up. He tries his hardest until seventh grade when a national exam determines his destiny. His classmates who pass the exam go on to higher education. When he fails, two options remain: farming or pastoring.
He finds himself tackling both jobs to feed his wife and growing family. Over the years, his family swells to include new converts kicked out of their homes for believing in Jesus. The one book he owns is a Bible translated into Swahili in antiquated diction.
He opens this Bible Sunday mornings and chooses the first passage he sees for his sermon. He preaches under a thatched roof to an audience sitting on plastic chairs or tree stumps. His wife takes no part in his ministry because culture says she qualifies as inferior, a servant rather than a partner.
Hope for the Hopeless
How much can a five-day ABH conference do for a ministry like this? What hope can it offer someone like Yona, whose early days as a church planter thrust his family deep into doubts and financial hardship? His wife questioned God’s promises, his design for the church, and her husband’s calling.
“I kept persevering, but a few months before the conference I started thinking of ways to talk my husband out of ministry,” Esta admitted. “If he insisted on continuing, I would have left him alone to find some relief.”
Masanja and Ansila arrived at the conference with forty years of marriage and seventeen years of ministry behind them. They have six children and a small farm where they raise pigs, chickens, ground nuts, sesame, and rice. Yet a long life together didn’t add up to a thriving relationship.
“Before the training, my husband never shared anything with me,” Ansila explained. “I felt like an outsider who did not deserve to hear our family’s secrets.”
All Things Possible
God makes possible what people find impossible. On the final day of the conference, Yona washed his wife’s feet and asked her for forgiveness. “Truths like ‘My spouse is a gift from God’brought a paradigm shift,” Yona said. “It took me three conference days to swallow the truth.
But when I embraced that direction, I realized a dramatic change in our marriage.”
Esta realized she needed to embrace her God-given role as her husband’s helper. “For all those years I drew a strong boundary between family and ministry life. The conference staff taught that God made us to rule as equals. As a wife I have a role to play in supporting my husband both in family and ministry.”
Conference mealtimes helped Masanja establish a new family tradition. Typically, Tanzanian women cook and serve men the best food, eating any leftovers after the men enjoy their fill. ABH staff encouraged pastor couples to eat together.
“I was challenged to reevaluate the life script handed down to me from my tradition,” Masanja said. “I repented of my sins of ignoring my wife and treating her like a second-class creature. I made a firm decision to not just give her reports but include her in the decision-making process.”
Exponential Impact
Yona and Esta headed home, hands full of ABH books, eager to train others. They gave Not Marked to a church member so she could begin healing from sexual abuse suffered nine years earlier. “Many people need books, even those who are not pastors,” Yona declared.
Masanja’s local village government regularly refers struggling families to him for counsel. He shares lessons on forgiveness and reconciliation from the Hope for Marriage book. “By God’s grace our marriage is preaching loudly in our community,” Ansila affirmed.
Pressing Needs, Powerful Prayers
ABH conferences feed pastor couples spiritually so they can feed their flocks. Please prayerfully consider donating towards the $1,705,000 needed to build a conference center for couples starving for biblical truth.
Check: payable to ABH 705 W. Filmore St., Winterset, IA, 50273
Venmo: @ABHBookHouse Names in this blog post have been changed to protect conference participants’ privacy